Capillary Condensation in 8 nm Deep Channels

摘要: Condensation on the nanoscale is essential to understand many natural and synthetic systems relevant water, air, energy. Despite its importance, underlying physics of condensation initiation propagation remain largely unknown at sub-10 nm, mainly due challenges controlling probing such small systems. Here we study n-propane down 8 nm confinement in a nanofluidic system, distinct from previous studies ∼100 nm. The initiates significantly earlier channels, it entrance, contrast channels just 10 times larger. condensate observed be governed by two liquid–vapor interfaces with an interplay between film bridging effects. We model experimental results using classical theories find good agreement, demonstrating that this nonpolar fluid system can treated as continuum thermodynamic perspective, despite having only 10–20 molecular layers.